Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Be careful what you set your heart on, for it will surely be yours.
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce
It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
The glory of friendship is not the outstreched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
Every artist was first an amateur.
Skill to do comes of doing.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could some blunders and absurdities have crept in forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us.
Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for beingWhy thou wert there, O rival of the roseI never sought to ask, I never knewBut, in my simple ignorance supposeThe selfsame power that brought me there brought you.
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Be and not seem.
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air
If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
In the woods is perpetual youth.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
Every sweet has its sour every evil its good.
As soon as there is life there is danger.
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
To laugh often and much to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others to leave the world a little better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
All mankind love a lover.
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education.
Life is a festival only to the wise.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam that flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts they come back to us with a sort of alienated majesty.
Never read a book that is not a year old.
What I must do is all that concerns me. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool it will be all one a hundred years hence.